Case Number 16490

GIGANTOR: THE COLLECTION, VOLUME 1

The Charge

Gigantor the space-age robot, Is at your command! Gigantor the
space-age robot, His power is in your hand! -- Gigantor
theme

Opening Statement

The sum total of my experience with anime comes from the kids' shows I
watched when I was but a wee lad. Every morning I'd fill my head with the
adventures of David the gnome or that girl who visited a magical koala land via
a eucalyptus tree planted outside her bedroom window while wearing a pink koala
mask as a disguise. It's a wonder I grew up without become a heavy drug user
considering that last one. Before there were pink koala masks and before there
were Transformers, there was Gigantor, one of the first Japanese
cartoons to land and land big in America.

Facts of the Case

Gigantor is a space-age robot, who is, perhaps, bigger than big and taller
than tall. He is under the control of twelve-year-old Jimmy Sparks, who uses a
remote control to pilot the automaton. Helping Jimmy are scientist Dr.
Brilliant, police chief Inspector Blooper, and agent Dick Strong. Together, they
fight off numerous evil dictators who try and take over the world.

There are 26 episodes total on four discs:

Disc One * "Struggle at the South Pole" *
"Battle at the Bottom of the World" * "Sting of the
Spider" * "Return of the Spider" * "Spider's
Revenge" * "The Secret Valley" * "The Diamond
Smugglers"

The Evidence

In the early 1960s, Fred Ladd, who was best known at the time for the hit
series Astro Boy (also a Japanese creation), grabbed Tetsujin
28-Go, renamed it Gigantor, and unleashed it on American audiences,
who promptly gobbled it up. It attained a cult status and lead to the creation
of a second and third series, though the third series never received the
Americanization treatment. In this volume, Entertainment One released the first
half of the original 52 episodes, no doubt in preparation for the CGI feature
film due to be released in two years (which honestly looks like a hell of a lot
of fun).

Ignoring that Gigantor is in black-and-white, going against the
modern notion that cartoons should be violently, abrasively colorful, it
probably would still resonate with kids today. The idea of a twelve-year old
controlling a twenty-ton, unstoppable robot, while terrifying to anyone past
puberty, taps into that primal element in the kid psyche to destroy things. The
villains are all colorful, in spite of their monochromatic hues, and their
general goofiness makes them less a viable threat and more clown-faced punching
bags for Gigantor to wail on.

It's also a truly bizarre show. Suffering from the same problems as any
repackaged, imported cartoon, the characters all speak in bizarre ways in order
to match up with the mouth movements. While they did a great job of matching it
up, largely avoiding the Godzilla style-dub of people moving their mouths long
after the words have stopped, they speak with the oil-slick speed of
auctioneers.

Really, any problems I point out with the show are there in any children's
program. It's patently bizarre (Deadly robot penguins! Poison candy! Dr.
Brilliant's son!), the dialogue will make your brain do loops trying to make
sense of it, and the animation gives the impression humanity evolved without
bones as arms and legs stretch and twist in ways that could make a contortionist
wince. It also suffers from copy-and-paste animation, with the same scenes being
used over and over again. You liked that shot of Gigantor throwing a tank? Well,
here it is again for your viewing pleasure!

It's funky, though, and fun and the whole old-fashioned feel of the show
somehow boosts the appeal. The retro designs of the robots, the strange names
(Doctor Katzmeow? Seriously?), and the otherworldly plots create a high-camp
cartoon, the Mona Lisa of campy cartoons if you will.

There are, of course, the negative aspects of its age. In one episode,
Australian Aboriginals are called savages and whoop and holler like
stereotypical American Indians in an old Western, allowing Gigantor to
offend two completely different ethnic groups at the same time. Women are either
absent or don't do much, save for the occasional femme fatale who tries to
murder our brave heroes.

Father Time has been less than kind with the picture and sound quality of
the show. The audio and video transfer leaves something to be desired. There's a
lot of pop and crackle on the track and dirt and scratches on the screen. I'm
willing to cut them some slack though, seeing how this is a forty-year-old
cartoon that probably wasn't afforded the same level of preservation as, say,
Citizen Kane.

As if to make up for the quality of the transfer, E1 has included a huge
amount of extras. Fred Ladd provides commentary for three of the episodes and
there's also a half-hour interview with the man. Casual viewers beware and only
the most diehard fans should check it out. He talks mainly about the sound and
dubbing process on the commentary tracks. It's not terrifically exciting stuff
and he has a tendency to ramble in both the interview and the tracks.

The interview with Fred Pattern, an anime historian, is far more interesting
and I recommend it for anyone remotely interested in anime or animation
history.

There are also six Gigantor comics included on the DVD that you can
access on the computer. They're just as bizarre as their animated counterpart,
but different enough to feel new. If you like the show, check out the comics and
keep an eye out for the strange parodies of the Fantastic Four and Doctor
Doom.

Closing Statement

Gigantor had a large impact on the shape of animation, both in the
States and in Japan. E1 has put together a great package and for any fan of the
series, it's well worth picking up. It's still fun to watch, even for a grumpy
twenty-four-year-old, and somehow manages to hold together as well as any
cartoon I used to watch as a kid. Except for the one about sentient koala bears,
nothing could top that.

The Verdict

This judge commends Gigantor for his service to humanity, but really wishes
someone would take the remote control away from that kid before he hits
adolescence.